Film Freak Centraltag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-999282957331064452014-10-01T12:15:16-05:00TypePadFantastic Fest '14: Dwarves Kingdomtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c6eb1fc1970b2014-10-01T12:15:16-05:002014-10-01T12:18:22-05:00***/**** directed by Matthew Salton by Walter Chaw Here's the thing, and I say this after years of being tortured by Chinese people: Chinese people are pretty awful. At least culturally, it should be said, there's an extreme disconnect in terms of social mores. There's a certain directness that's difficult to assimilate as an American, along with a certain disapproval that maybe I'm just more sensitive to because of my privileged status as neither fish nor fowl. I used to say the Chinese perfected racism because they had to learn how to be racist towards people who didn't look substantially different from themselves. I became a case study in a graduate anthropology course once concerning the evolution of human sexuality. Asked about my object-choice apparatus (was I triggered more by distinct facial features than by hair colour, for instance, or body type?), I wasn't offended. It's a good question. So Matthew Salton's documentary Dwarves Kingdom is an uncomfortable watch for me, above and beyond all the ways the film should be uncomfortable for everyone. It essays China's titular theme park/vacation destination, a Disney--well, Casa Bonita--knock-off featuring hundreds of little people "collected or adopted" by an insane entrepreneur, who forces them...Bill ChambersThe Promise (2005) - DVD (U.S. version)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a51116f658970c2014-01-19T00:01:00-05:002014-01-18T12:04:09-05:00*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C starring Hiroyuki Sanada, Jang Dong Gun, Cecilia Cheung, Nicholas Tse screenplay by Chen Kaige and Zhang Tan directed by Chen Kaige by Walter Chaw Any fad reaches its nadir in due time and the Western wuxia infatuation, which started somewhere around Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and more or less peaked with Zhang Yimou's exceptional Hero, has found its basement in the truncated version of Chen Kaige's already-pretty-embarrassing The Promise. Somewhere, King Hu is spinning in his grave. An abomination just about any way you slice it, this ultra-expensive, CGI'd-to-exhaustion wire-fu epic--especially as sanitized for North America's consumption--suggests the world's saddest public display of penis envy. Chen, hailing from the same Fifth Generation school as Zhang, produces a show-offy, self-indulgent bit of flamboyant one-upsmanship destined to become a queer camp classic. When the Crimson General (Hiroyuki Sanada) trades in his fabulous duds for a lavender muumuu in which to trade barbs with archenemy Wuhuan (Nicholas Tse, suspended somewhere between pretty girl and Japanese anime hero), a bad guy garbed in white feathers who wields a gold staff topped with a bronze hand, index finger extended in proctological menace, the homoeroticism of the piece--already distracting...Bill ChambersA Touch of Sin (2013)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c019b001e3647970b2013-10-18T10:05:53-05:002013-10-18T10:12:18-05:00***/**** starring Jiang Wu, Zhao Tao, Wang Baoqiang, Luo Lanshan written and directed by Jia Zhangke by Angelo Muredda The blood doesn't flow so much as it spurts in A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhangke's invigorated if uneven return to straight fiction following an extended sojourn in hybridized documentaries about modern Chinese cities. More than the formal homecoming, however, it's the nature of the storytelling that surprises in his newest--the leap from the elegiac tone of films like 24 City into the more primal stuff of pulp. A wuxia anthology with revenge-thriller overtones, A Touch of Sin is an unusually direct genre exercise for a master filmmaker, in the sense that, unlike Steven Spielberg's Munich and other comparably shame-faced prestige films that dip a single toe in the waters of genre, it doesn't condescend to the populist trappings of the material. Jia isn't slumming so much as tapping into the righteous indignation of a popular tradition of stories about wronged knights and ruined innocents, sincerely transposed here to the working-class fringe of a nation state in the throes of late capitalism. If Jia's violence comes fast and leaves a mess, then, it's a testament to his willingness to get his...Bill ChambersCurse of the Golden Flower (2006) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c0192ac2b682b970d2013-07-24T23:01:00-05:002013-07-24T12:08:30-05:00**½/**** Image B Sound A Extras D starring Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Liu Ye screenplay by Zhang Yimou, Wu Nan, Bian Zhihong directed by Zhang Yimou by Walter Chaw I recently had the opportunity to see for the first time the cut of Zhang Yimou's virtuoso Hero prepared for Yankee viewers, complete with the subtitles and framing cards slapped on by American distributors. Before now, the only contact I'd had with the film was through a region-free DVD from Hong Kong that preceded the U.S. theatrical release by a couple of years. (After buying the rights to it, Miramax, you'll recall, decided to sit on it until such time as its unleashing wouldn't somehow interfere with timeless masterpieces of misguided schlock like Cold Mountain.) Anyway, I was appalled. The extent to which Hero has been dumbed-down--the insertion of "our country" for a term that means, in Mandarin, "beneath the sky" drums up this weird nationalistic gumbo at the end where, before, it was sober and idealistic--manages to paint Zhang as the worst kind of toad. There's an animated map at the beginning now, I guess to show the great unwashed American moron that there is land outside...Bill ChambersCJ7 (2008) - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c016766cf682c970b2012-05-26T10:16:31-05:002012-05-26T10:16:31-05:00**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+ starring Stephen Chow, Xu Jiao, Huang Lei, Kitty Zhang screenplay by Vincent Kok, Tsang Kan Cheong, Sandy Shaw Lai King, Fung Chih Chiang, Lam Fung directed by Stephen Chow by Bryant Frazer Lord knows we need inspired lunatics like Stephen Chow. Chow is a genial, graceful physical comic in the mode of Jackie Chan, yet even sillier, if you can imagine that. Like Chan, he makes movies that feel conspicuously alien in a Hollywood context, in large part because he's expert in a discipline that Hollywood has lately devalued. In the U.S., the dominant style of comedy is verbally oriented, with quips, awkward characters, and contrived situations driving the gags. For Stephen Chow, comedy is largely body-oriented. It's not that he doesn't script situation comedy--a movie like God of Cookery, with its parody of celebrity-chef competitions (and John Woo movies!), is built on an elaborate sitcom frame--but that he's more obsessed with performance. Chow is preoccupied with people's faces, their body types, the way they approach one another, and how they stand in conversation or confrontation. By the time he did Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, it was easy to see how...Bill Chambers